After 23 years, court hears new evidence in Monroe County church camp arson case

Friday

May 30, 2014 at 11:27 AMMay 30, 2014 at 11:41 AM

Han Tak Lee was convicted in 1990 of setting a fire that killed his daughter, but new tests of the evidence used to convict Lee show that was denied a fair trial, his attorneys say.

Peter Hall

HARRISBURG -- For more than 23 years, Han Tak Lee has fought from inside a Pennsylvania prison cell to prove he is innocent of killing his daughter in a fire at a Monroe County church camp.

On Thursday, Lee appeared in a Harrisburg courtroom as renowned fire investigation expert John J. Lentini explained his theory that investigators and prosecutors put a spin on evidence that led a jury to wrongly convict the Korean immigrant of arson and murder.

New tests of the evidence used to convict Lee combined with an admission by prosecutors that conclusions on the cause and origin of the blaze were based more on superstition than science show Lee was denied a fair trial, Lee's attorneys say.

If a federal judge agrees, Lee could become a free man for the first time since his 1990 conviction shocked the Korean-American community in New York City, where he and his daughter lived. He's serving a life sentence.

The idea that Lee, a former teacher who owned a clothing store in Queens, could kill his 20-year-old mentally ill daughter is difficult for many to grasp, said Chris Chang, a Korean-language radio host who attended the hearing.

"It is quite unimaginable for Korean culture," said Chang, who was among more than a dozen people who traveled from New York for the hearing.

For Lee's sister, Han Kyung of Kings Park, N.Y., hearing the new evidence in her brother's defense brought a nearly overwhelming sense of hope that her family might soon be reunited, she said through a friend who translated her Korean.

Lee, now 79, had taken his daughter, Ji Yun Lee, to Camp Hebron, a Korean Christian retreat in Stroud Township, the day after she suffered a breakdown and began hurling objects from the family's third-floor Queens apartment.

The fire was reported about 3 a.m. July 29, 1989, and police and firefighters first on the scene found Lee sitting calmly on a bench with his luggage beside him. His daughter's badly burned body was found in a hallway near their cabin's bathroom.

An autopsy revealed she had burned to death rather than succumbed to smoke inhalation, but also noted the presence of small bruises on her neck that could have been signs of strangulation.

Lee testified through an interpreter that he awoke to find the cabin filled with smoke and ran outside, assuming his daughter would do the same. He re-entered the building twice to search for Ji Yun Lee, retrieving his luggage and retreating from the smoke and flames only after finding the bathroom door locked, according to transcripts filed in the case.

Changes to arson investigations

Lee's case is one of dozens across the country in which convictions for arson and murder have been called into question by a revolution in fire science, said Lentini, a veteran of more than 2,000 fire investigations.

The Monroe County district attorney's office has conceded that many of the observations by investigators held out as proof that the blaze was intentionally set are meaningless. Burn patterns on the floor, crazed glass and collapsed bedsprings -- once widely accepted and taught as signs of an intentional fire -- have now been discredited, Lentini said.

But Lee's attorney, Peter Goldberger, said his client still must refute a contention by prosecutors that a mixture of fuel oil and gasoline on both the shirt and trousers Lee wore the night of the blaze and debris from the ruins of the cabin prove that it was he and not his daughter, who suffered bipolar disorder, who intentionally set the fire.

At Lee's trial, state police chemist Thomas Pacewicz testified that the shirt, trousers and debris all had traces of the same mixture of fuel oil and gasoline.

But when Pacewicz was pressed to say whether the chemical signatures of the substances on the clothing and the debris were actually identical, he was evasive, saying only that they fell into the same range, Lentini noted.

"I don't think he was as honest as a scientist needs to be," Lentini said Thursday.

Lentini's tests of the shirt, trousers and debris last year show that only Lee's shirt had gasoline on it. And while the trousers and debris had traces of petroleum products, there was no evidence of the mixture that prosecutors said Lee spread around the cabin to ensure the fire spread quickly.

"There is no way these three samples were exposed to the same pre-blended mixture, which was the narrative at the trial," Lentini said.

Monroe County District Attorney David Christine featured Pacewicz's conclusion about the fuel mixture in his summation of the evidence for jurors.

"That's what the thrust of the closing argument was -- that it had to be Mr. Lee and not his daughter because of this mixture that didn't exist," Lentini testified Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Martin Carlson.

Assistant District Attorney Bradley Schmidt presented the testimony of state police crime lab analyst Clyde Liddick, who testified differences in the gas chromatography techniques used by Pacewicz and Lentini as well as the age of the evidence could have caused the different results.

Lentini testified that although he used a more advanced method to test the samples, the results would be more refined, but not show the presence of different substances than Pacewicz's. The evidence was sealed in metal cans, which were in good condition, so there was no reason to suspect the substances on the clothing and debris had degraded over time.

Appeal process

Lentini, who became involved in Lee's case after he was asked to review evidence by a CBS News reporter in 1993, has long questioned Pacewicz's testimony.

After the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2012 ruled that lower court decisions denying the opportunity to re-examine the evidence undermined Lee's right to due process of law, Lentini was able perform new tests on the clothing and debris, the few items of physical evidence that could be found more than two decades after the trial.

Lentini also asked to review the results of Pacewicz's gas chromatography tests showing the molecular composition of the substances on the clothing and debris to see whether they matched.

He was told the state police should have had the documents in storage, but authorities never produced them.

Carlson, the magistrate judge assigned to preside over the hearing, must now make a recommendation to U.S. District Judge William J. Nealon on Lee's fate.

Goldberger said Nealon could order Lee to be released pending a new trial if he finds the first trial was unfair, or release him on a finding that he is innocent of the charges, although that is less likely.

Even if Nealon orders a new trial, it is unlikely prosecutors would proceed because most of the evidence is now missing and many of the witnesses are dead.

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